shut the hell up

August 4, 2001 5:16 AM

"OWillis, shut the hell up, you pinhead. If you have something to add, add it. If not, keep your damn, troll, stinky, ass shut. I do not have time for people like you. Right now, you are not welcome in this thread."
posted by crunchland to etiquette/policy at 5:16 AM (26 comments total)

July 11, 2001: joins Metafilter.
August 3, 2001: attempts a coup d'état.
posted by pracowity at 5:30 AM on August 4, 2001

Yes. Really disturbing. He needs some re-parenting. Or parenting.
posted by ParisParamus at 6:08 AM on August 4, 2001

Looking at the time of the posts, my theory is that Sardines simply flipped out and temporarily lost his sense of ironic detachment.
posted by rcade at 6:13 AM on August 4, 2001

I thought the owillis post was completely appropriate. In fact when I read Steven's and sardine's posts, the exact same thought went through my head.

Sardines? "I do not have time for people like you." If you want to dictate the content and posting guidelines on Metafilter, could you please try harder to say something interesting or thought provoking at some point? I find all (all) of your posts to be boring and inane.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that sardines is really just a spoof, and someone is just having fun with us. But even that is rather boring, so maybe I just don't understand.
posted by y6y6y6 at 6:19 AM on August 4, 2001

Now is this ironic, or just Alanis-type ironic?

"It is just a thread about a relatively insignifigant person and a relatively insignifigant comment to that end. Gee, I am sorry I offended your posting sensibilities."

"there has been a trend to attack the individual at the expense of the argument or issue. As an outsider, I have really noticed it."

10 points to the person who can guess who posted said pithy prose?
posted by owillis at 6:55 AM on August 4, 2001

There seems to be a lot of that silly 'blog nicely' vibe floating around lately. Kinda a judge not yet ye be judged crap. I say fuck it.

I see someone or thing that's wrong, odd, or amusing I'm gonna point it out and comment. It's human nature. The urge to not hurt feelings actually makes things worse, it weakens the emotional callous we need to make it through a world that is hard, cold, and viscous.

Not because humans are bad things but that's how nature is...ever see a cheetah pass up a sick gazelle because it would be wrong to pick on the inform, hell no.

It's time to thin the heard.
posted by Mick at 7:43 AM on August 4, 2001

"Not because humans are bad thing" your a confucian i see. "It's time to thin the heard." even in jest, i go ape shit at such rhetoric-please stop it. (and your word play sucks) what if someone wanted to thin you out. One should learn to be nice, stop yelling and bashing. confrontation that appeals to a sense of shame, not hate. I would like to pounce sardine too but that denies his right to feel he is right or the ability to have him change his opinion.

posted by clavdivs at 8:02 AM on August 4, 2001

i'll grant you that mefi is not a link portal the way that Portal of Evil or rcade's Cruel.com are, but not everyone in the community has to be Nice. no one promised a hello kitty extravaganza.

if rasta's link is inappropriate, then sardines' responses are doubly so. i don't care if you identify with the guy a bit or not -- this just doesn't rank highly enough to get all that worked up over. sardines needs to get off his high horse.
posted by moz at 8:18 AM on August 4, 2001

July 11, 2001: joins Metafilter.
August 3, 2001: attempts a coup d'état.

this just doesn't rank highly enough to get all that worked up over. sardines needs to get off his high horse.

HMMMMM? Methinks others might as well. I kinda view this whole episode as one of which flavor of "right-thinking" is acceptable and which isn't. So Sardines took personal and emotional ownership of a thread (in his mind). So what? We've all invested ourselves in the ideas that come from this site to the point that it is acceptable to judge the importance or impact of one's ideas on how long they've been a subscriber.

I didn't think sardines was all that out of line in being offended that he got told what he should think, that he was thin-skinned and not "right-thinking" by owillis. Personnaly, I would rue the day that we become unconcerned about offending others. Sardines was offended, Rastafari apologized personally for the offense, but not for the posting, they went on. That's polite societal behavior. What I did find innapropriate was the infusion of the idea that we all shouldn't be concerned about what offends and what doesn't. Dissing "political correctness" (as if there ever were such a thing) has been the greatest tool of the extreme right to date, and has put an idiot in the White House. If you say or post something that might offend, as Rastafari did, then deal with it thoughtfully and nobly, as he did. There is no inherent "wrongness" in offending someone. Conversely there is nothing inherently right in telling the general populous that we shouldn't be offended.

What really stuck in my craw was this:

The urge to not hurt feelings actually makes things worse, it weakens the emotional callous we need to make it through a world that is hard, cold, and viscous.

No, this is not correct, this is not a given of existance, and I will never accept that it is. Two short mornings ago, I was driving to work and I saw a car driving the other way clip a deer in the hind leg, badly (from the look of it) smashing the right knee. The driver just drove on, obviously cussing up a shit-storm that some pissant deer had the gall to get in his way, and might have damaged his car, and god-dammit why do deer have to cross the road at 6:15 when he's driving to work and ... If the deer had a car, I'm sure that that guy would have come back later and slashed its tires or keyed the paint. I pulled over, but the deer was able to hobble down the hill and behind the house at the bottom. When I got to work, I reported the incedent to animal control, and to fish and game. And I felt pretty shitty for several hours afterwards. The point of this anectdote is pretty simple. Anyone can be a calloused asshole because life is a bitch. I don't like them, and I would hope most of you don't like them. Yes, Mick, we do need to develope coping skills for life, but not having an emotional investment in the things we encounter is NOT a good thing at all.

But then, what do I know, I only have a MeFi userid in the 4000 range.


posted by Wulfgar! at 1:13 PM on August 4, 2001

Whoops, that would be 5000 range. Guess I'm not even as important as that, (wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?).
posted by Wulfgar! at 1:15 PM on August 4, 2001

When sardines becomes the final arbiter of all things Metafilter and we all heed his words not to post things that may offend him, let me know.

Yes, political correctness does exist. And its dumb.
posted by owillis at 2:34 PM on August 4, 2001

He won't, we won't, don't hold your breath. Sarcasm does not an argument make.

As to the existence of "political correctness", by all means prove that it does exist. I'm a liberal, and I don't believe it. Susan Faludi is a liberal, and she wrote a book arguing that its a weapon, not a doctrine, so she doesn't believe it. Come on, hotshot, you think others are telling you what to think, so you have the right to tell me what to think? All you have to do is prove the existence of PC first, and then show that that justifies your participation to the contrary. And please forgive me if I don't hold my breath.
posted by Wulfgar! at 2:53 PM on August 4, 2001

While I think that sardines' response to owillis was inappropriate and uncalled for, I'm a little disappointed over the rush to embrace the lowest common denominator found in the above reactions. (Especially since some of the same people have been involved in the "MeFi sucks now" movement.) So, I suppose, keep your stupid, silly, or offensive posts off the front page MetaFilter, unless it's "un-PC", in which case it's your right and duty to post them so we can all have a good laugh at someone else's expense.
posted by jess at 2:59 PM on August 4, 2001

I'm not just embracing the lowest common denominator. I'm dry-humping it [self-link].

The problem with comments like this ...

I am so happy to hear that we find humor in the satirization of problems that many people have.

... and this ...

I was raised not to laugh at someone who is ill. That's what they taught us in the 1950's.

... is that they're humor penicillin. All satire is at someone's expense, and there's always a person out there who has a deeply-felt, painful reason why the subject of a joke is not a laughing matter.

There's no way to avoid offending people without avoiding humor entirely. Even the author of the 1950s quote above made a funny this week about Bonsai Kitten, a subject that ranks pretty high on the no-laughing-matter scale for a bunch of people.

For this reason, I think the best policy is fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
posted by rcade at 4:05 PM on August 4, 2001

Read the thread. Read numerous threads. The whole idea of political correctness as I see it is this nincompoopish idea that nobody should ever offend anyone else. Know what? Doesn't work in the real world.

And I'm a liberal too.
posted by owillis at 4:57 PM on August 4, 2001

rcade, I would first like to point out that I made no attempt to bully anyone or to prevent anyone from posting what they did. I don't agree with most of what "sardine" wrote in that thread, so don't try to lump me in with him(?).

Second, there are degrees and kinds of humor. I kid people with the best of them, but I only take on people who can kid me right back. I don't pick on people when they're down. I don't laugh at people because of their misfortunes. I don't find someone else's pain to be funny.

I don't think there's anything funny about stealing the crippled kid's cane and playing keep-away.

It's certainly not illegal to laugh at someone else's problems, but I consider it tasteless and cruel. I don't like jokes which are deliberately intended to make someone feel pain. Laughter is one thing; mockery is another.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:19 PM on August 4, 2001

I don't consider that "political correctness". I consider that common courtesy. Political correctness is where you learn to never use certain words in the presence of certain people because of some imagined slight as declared by some demagogue. That's not the same thing.

It's not a situation of all-or-nothing. Because I say that I don't think we should laugh at someone because they're crippled doesn't mean I don't think we should ever laugh at anyone else at all.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:22 PM on August 4, 2001

Read the thread. Read numerous threads. The whole idea of political correctness as I see it is this nincompoopish idea that nobody should ever offend anyone else. Know what? Doesn't work in the real world.

And I'm a liberal too.

I did read the thread. And, if you read what I have written here, you will see that I also think that the idea of PC is nincompoopishness. The facts of the case are these:
1) sardines was offended by the post in question and expressed it almost violently.
2) Someone posted a general comment that Gee wouldn't it be nice if we all didn't have to worry about offending anyone else 'cause everybody accepts everything and wouldn't it be nice if we get past this phase in society when everyone is afraid of possibly offending someone else, .
3) sardines reacted as if he had been attacked for incorrect thinking.

He had been, DUH. Absolutely NO ONE had been acting as if it were anything but personal between Rastafari and sardines, until your post. Don't try and convince me that you were defending a higher good until you own up to having done so and then defend that higher good.

And, owillis, you still try to claim, without proof, that nice doesn't work in the modern world. You are assuming belief in what I asked you prove before and you can't. Its really simple: prove political correctness exists. You can't. I know you can't. All you can do is trust in the support of those around you. Boo Hoo.

Nice is the charity that gives without hope for recompense. Nice is the person who offers an argument instead of platitudes, to change anothers mind. Don't tell me that nice doesn't work in the real world. That's foolish and stupid, and ignorant of the facts. "Man is a social being": Aristotle.
posted by Wulfgar! at 6:15 PM on August 4, 2001

The story referenced in This Thread (j-lo uses bad word gets spanked) offers recent proof that political correctness does exist. A better example might be Jimmy "the Greek" whose career was pretty much torpedoed by the urge towards PC.

There are clearly things in this society that people can't get away with saying in public. Whether that's a good or bad thing is something that could be debated, but to say it doesn't exist is a little naïve (in fact prior to posting this I considered whether it wouldn’t be better to try to find an example that wasn’t racial since these two may suggest a bias that I wouldn’t want people to mistakenly believe I held). I'm not sure how denouncing PC is a tool of the right, and I’m fairly convinced that knocking PC was not what got Bush elected, but that's probably a better discussion for out on MetaFilter proper.
posted by willnot at 6:47 PM on August 4, 2001

There are clearly things in this society that people can't get away with saying in public.

Because they are obviously and stupidly wrong.

Whether that's a good or bad thing is something that could be debated, but to say it doesn't exist is a little naïve (in fact prior to posting ....

If your fear keeps you from offending then you don't understand what I've written. But don't call me naive just to establish what can't be proven. Political correctness doesn't exist. That any person faces censure for saying what is patently wrong doesn't mean that they're a victim of something insidious. It just mght mean they've said something stupid. Don't tell me that Jimmy the Greek was somehow a poor innocent. What he said was completely unverified tripe, based on nothing, posited in an inaproppriate venue. Too bad for him.

If you want to call someone a nigger, and then hide behind the wall of oppressive "political correctness", then dream again. Most of us aren't that stupid. I live in a state where one of our senators called Native Americans "Hoops" yet he defends himself successfully by claiming that any offended are only defending political correctness ... Right...We're supposed to know better than most. We're supposed to understand the negative aspects of Native Americans. Its too important to be derailed by political correctness. Do you agree with his most important view? I didn't think so.
posted by Wulfgar! at 9:31 PM on August 4, 2001

Political correctness is more subtle than someone saying "nigger". It is this often liberal, sometimes conservative mentality of saying "what this person is saying upsets my world view, and instead of debating them I just want to shut them up". See the recent Eminem brouhaha for an example.

Because they are obviously and stupidly wrong.

This is the whole problem with PC thought. On some things, yes - there is an empirical answer, but on most issues there are numerous positions. To automatically declare one position dumb and that it shouldn't even be said is "obviously and stupidly wrong".
posted by owillis at 11:08 PM on August 4, 2001

OK, I see. It's a semantic argument. You say prove I'm in a forest. I say look around, and you say what, all I see are trees.

Being told not to say something because it's obviously wrong is the definition of political correctness. When you say prove it exists, what you really mean is prove it's bad. I don't believe that's provable (it falls into the category of it's all relative), but that doesn't mean it is or isn't true.

posted by willnot at 11:47 PM on August 4, 2001

OK, here's how I would define it.

"Political Correctness" is based on the theory that "right speaking will cause right thinking." If a certain word or phrase is associated with hateful or undesirable thoughts, then if we can eradicate that word and force people to use a different word or phrase then the hateful thoughts will be left behind. So goes the theory.

That is a crock, of course. Words are simply access-keys for accessing concepts we carry, and altering the key doesn't change the record. If you introduce a new word or phrase it doesn't change the concept. It's all based on faulty pop-psych.

People with every political persuasion have done this. Nixon was famous for it, especially during the VietNam War, when for instance his administration coined the term "protective reaction strike" as a synonym for "attack". But it's become most notorious in the hands of bleeding heart liberals, who have come up with such ludicrous phrases as "differently abled" and "qqq-challenged". (I'm still not sure whether the term "vertically-challenged" as a synonym for "short" originally came from the movement or was coined as a parody of it.)

As such, it is a knee-jerk reaction to the words someone uses as an indirect means of attacking what they're thinking. I think it's idiotic.

But that's unrelated to a case where I would directly object to someone's attitudes (irrespective of the words they use to express those attitudes). If someone says "nigger" in a spiteful way, I don't say "You should call them 'African Americans'." Rather, I say "Racism is wrong." That isn't "Political Correctness".

When I find someone whose opinons I find abhorrent, I follow Mill's advice: I have no right to suppress them and do not try to do so. My only choice is to express my opinion and then to avoid them if they don't change.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:10 AM on August 5, 2001

Steven Den Beste - Well said (much better than I did), and I couldn't agree with you more.
posted by Wulfgar! at 7:26 AM on August 5, 2001

Now that the PC digression is played out, what about the original issue at hand? This is a self-regulating community, but "shut the hell up, you pinhead" verges on self-dictating. The site is all about discussion, but instead of engaging in argument, sardines pitched a fit and told owillis to shut up-- in response to owillis' simple complaint, "Jesus H., people. When we get past this phase in society when everyone is afraid of possibly offending someone else, lemme know."

How does that brief comment deserve "keep your damn, troll, stinky, ass shut"? How is that appropriate/acceptable?
posted by Zettai at 1:40 PM on August 5, 2001

Ya'll realize that they let little kids have computers, right? Check out some of the choice pejoratives that young sardine lays upon us: "pinhead", "stinky"....takes me right back to the fifth grade. Point being, getting all righteously indignant over a snotty little kid with a limited vocabulary seems like a tremendous waste of energy.
posted by Optamystic at 3:13 PM on August 5, 2001